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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

Alan Watts

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
Lives
May
Live
Unduly
Absorbed
Altogether
Improving
Forget

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For me, being literate and articulate is a form of judo, of overcoming the [system] by its own method.
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Anxiety is the fear that one of a pair of opposites might cancel the other. Forever.
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Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
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Where-so-ever beings exist throughout all galaxies, it doesn't make any difference - you are all of them....and when they come into being, that's you coming into being.
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The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
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Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
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Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
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There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do.
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Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
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Just what should a young man or woman know to be 'in the know'? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?
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To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.
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To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.
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What would you do if money was no object?
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To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
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Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.
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Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.
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